Last week, Tyler Florence quietly opened El Paseo, his third Bay Area restaurant venture in the last year after Wayfare Tavern and Rotisserie & Wine. The restaurant — which is actually a reinvention of the restaurant by the same name that resided in the European-style, brick-alley space in Mill Valley for decades — is an unpretentiously luxe take on the steakhouse trend, tucked in three cozy dining areas with adjacent outdoor spaces, complete with a mid-century soundtrack on the speakers and servers in white button-downs and black bow ties, evoking the era when the restaurant first made its mark in Marin.
Florence is hitting his stride perhaps even more successfully here than at Wayfare, with the help of chef de cuisine Preston Clark, previously of Jean Georges in NYC, and the additional bonus of a quaint, romantic space with great bones and a lot of soul.
And then there’s the steak. As discussed earlier, Florence decided to forgo the more common Angus beef in favor of dry aged, grass-fed Holstein beef, sourced from southern California and dry-aged locally for 38 days by Brian Flannery in Corte Madera. Florence tells Grub Street he tried over 200 different steaks before settling on these, and it was largely because of the marbling and flavor unique to Holstein cattle. The bone-in ribeye which we tried was, indeed, an incredible cut of meat — tender and full of flavor and didn’t even need the addition of steak sauce or any other condiment. [Editor’s Note: Grub Street paid full price for our meal.]
Below, check out our full slideshow of the space and the steak, shot during the rains yesterday. And note Tyler won’t be resting for long following this big opening, as a new, second location of Rotisserie & Wine opens at SFO in April.
El Paseo - 17 Throckmorton Avenue, Mill Valley - 415.388.0741
Earlier: What to Eat at El Paseo, Now Open in Mill Valley [Grub Street]
Tyler Florence to Give the Bay Area a Third Restaurant, El Paseo, Next Week [Grub Street]
